CSS and Digital Future Lab win Microsoft Research Connection award

June 7, 2013 --CSS and the Digital Future Lab were recently awarded $47,500 from Microsoft Research Connection in partnership with the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts to co-develop an alternate reality game to help students develop digital literacy through creative media creation. The game was initially designed by USC as a tool to help new Cinematic Arts students acclimate to the program, and UWB was offered the opportunity to will further develop the game and extend it to support a wider range of college and K-12 students. The nature of the game requires details to remain a mystery for now, but be on the lookout for clues this summer!

CSS Graduation Recognition Dinner at Redhook Brewery

June 14, 2013 5:00-8:00pm-- Come join us for the first annual CSS Graduation Recognition Dinner at the Redhook Brewery! Food, drink, and an award ceremony highlight a relaxing evening to bring the academic year to a close. For dinner, please indicate either meat, fish, or vegetarian in your reply and any dietary restrictions. We will be happy to accommodate. Please also indicate the number of guests that you wish to bring including yourself, admission is the same per guest.

Admission will be $25 per person, payment can be in the form of:
1. A check made out to UWB with CSS in the memo

Cyber Defense at Camp Murray

May 11–12 2013 -- The 3rd in a series of cyber defense exer­cises (Ever­green CDX) with the Wash­ing­ton Army National Guard will be tak­ing place at Camp Mur­ray, Wash­ing­ton and in Honolulu, HI. The “Ever­green CDX” is designed to bring prac­ti­tion­ers in indus­try and gov­ern­ment together with stu­dents to prac­tice cyber­se­cu­rity event response, mit­i­ga­tion, and strat­egy. By having prac­ti­tion­ers from indus­try, gov­ern­ment, and stu­dents from local col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties we are able to fos­ter a diverse team set­ting that helps pro­mote com­mu­ni­ca­tion, lead­er­ship, and rela­tion­ships. This is increas­ingly impor­tant as every sec­tor attempts to han­dle grow­ing cyber­se­cu­rity threats, the task of report­ing events, and deter­min­ing what resources are avail­able from gov­ern­ment agen­cies for addi­tional help.This event is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between UW Both­ell CSS, the CIAC, Uni­ver­sity of Hawaii, Manoa, Wash­ing­ton Army National Guard and the Hawaii National Guard.

Kochanski/McCarthy named Worthington Fellows

April 2013 --Mark Kochanski and Joseph McCarthy have been named Worthington Innovation Fellows for their project "Exploration of Credentialing Learning within Current Systems". The Worthington Innovation Fellows program supports the use of technology to enhance innovation across the campus.

SPEAR Cloud Deployed

March 2013-- CSS has just completed deployment of the first full private cloud installation at a educational institution using Microsoft technologies. The installation, which we have dubbed "SPEAR Cloud", is intended to support cybersecurity education in CSS, including our new MS in Cyber Security Engineering. We will also be supporting cyber defense exercises with external partners, the first one being with the Washington State Army National Guard in May. This deployment was enabled by a grant from Microsoft and Nathcorp.

CSS 497 Colloquium Winter 2013

Big Splash Cyber Defense Excercise

Oahu, Hawaii March 7–10

Big Splash Cyber Defense Exer­ciseis a four-day event that aims to empower cyber secu­rity respon­ders with skills and tech­niques to prop­erly plan, man­age, and respond to cyber­se­cu­rity inci­dents related to crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture. This event brings prac­ti­tion­ers and stu­dents together for 4 days of inten­sive learn­ing and exer­cises to rein­force infor­ma­tion assur­ance and cyber­se­cu­rity skills as well as build­ing net­works of trust through the cyberde­fense community.

For those of you who can’t make it to Hawaii…
There is also a remote team to tie in stu­dents and prac­ti­tion­ers in Seat­tle through UW Bothell.

Tracer FIRE Registration

UWB CSS Hosts Tracer FIRE Cybersecurity Workshop

February 4-8, 2013-- The CSS Program, in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory, will be a regional hub for Tracer FIRE 5, a week-long hands-on computer security workshop for cyber defenders in DOE, other government agencies, critical infrastructure, and college students. The exercise consists of 2 days of intensive training, followed by a 2½-day game in which contestants are placed on a team to compete for points across multiple categories. Refreshments and professional networking opportunities will also be provided. Stay tuned for sign-up information!

Cybersecurity at Camp Murray

December 10, 2012 --The Cyber Defense event this weekend at Camp Murray was a resounding success with over 60 participants competing using the UWB Computing and Software Systems SPEAR Cloud virtual computing environment (Security, Policy, Education, and Advanced Research Cloud). Event participants included Washington State Army and Air National Guard members, members for the National Guard Bureau (representing the central command of the National Guard) and students from high schools, all UW campuses, and as far away as EWU. The Guard is taking on the role to help state agencies and critical infrastructure and key resource partners with cybersecurity. By providing a dynamic training environment closely configured to academic programs such as the UWB Masters in Cybersecurity Engineering, we are able to reinforce the skills needed to complete the mission of today's citizen cyber soldier with additional formalized world class education from UW Bothell. This provides the best of both worlds enabling the success of Guard members in their new missions and in their professional life outside of the Guard.

This is the second of three events planned with the Army National Guard with the next event scheduled for May. This event utilizes the SPEAR Cloud of the UW Bothell Computing and Software Systems. The SPEAR Cloud is a collaborative effort between UWB CSS and the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity.

Wooyoung Kim Earns NSF Grant

November 28, 2012 --Prof. Wooyoung Kim secured $400,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology, Evolutionary Biology Panel for her project "RUI: Characterization of Coevolution, Adaptation, and Diversification in a Model Microbial Mutualism", in collaboration with S&T’s Kristina Hillesland.

Bioinformatics Research Presentations

November 27/29, 2012-- BIO 393 and CSS 390 Bioinformatics students will be presenting research projects on applying Bioinformatics methods to important biological questions.

UWB Students "Hacking" the Washington National Guard

October 22, 2012--This past weekend was the Collegiate Cyber Defense exercise with the Washington Army National Guard, where our UWB Gray Hat Society took their experience on the road to Camp Murray to provide the Red Team hackers for the exercise. This is the second time UWB students have had a chance to be on the attacking side and they did a great job against the defending Blue Team of National Guard members and students from Whatcom Community College. By participating in competition environments like this one, Guard members and students are able to move from classroom theory to an applied real world scenario, one that will be re-used for exercises with Lawrence Livermore National Labs and the Washington Army National Guard.

2011-12 was record-breaking year for UWB Computer Science bachelor degrees

October 11, 2012 --The numbers are in, and we awarded a record number of computer science bachelors degrees last year — 6% more than the previous high (in 2003-04) and 30% more than the previous year. UWB CSS is now the second largest producer of computer science bachelors degrees in the state.

CSS Faculty and Students at the 14th Annual CCSC Northwest Regional Conference

October 5&6, 2012 --CSS students Jack Keng-Wei Chang, Long Hoang Dang, and Jebediah Pavleas, along with CSS faculty Kelvin Sung and Joe McCarthy and Jason Bay from Glu Mobile, Inc., will be presenting the paper "Experience with Dream Coders: Developing a 2D role playing game for teaching introductory programming concepts" at the 14th Annual CCSC Northwest Regional Conference. Jack Chang and Jeb Pavleas will also be presenting a student poster, "KinectMath", prepared under the supervision of Prof. Sung and UWB Education Prof. Robin Angotti.

Kelvin Sung Earns NSF Grant

September 5, 2012-- Prof. Kelvin Sung received a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the project, "Game-Themed CS1/2: Empowering the Faculty". He will be developing materials, training, and support structures for interested faculty members to selectively integrate game-themed content into their introductory programming courses with minimum impact on their existing curriculum. Faculty members will be able to update their courses while maintaining their existing intellectual investments and will thus be empowered to take advantage of the recent successes in game-themed CS education to further attract, engage, and retain students in introductory programming courses.

Hazel Asuncion Secures NSF Grant

August 29, 2012-- Prof. Hazeline Asuncion secured $500,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation for her project "Tracing and Reasoning about Changing Artifacts", which is in collaboration with new CSS research faculty member Macneil Shonle. This project aims to develop lightweight and flexible technology to manage and understand changes that occur to software during the development process.

Academic Exchange Agreement Signed with Shizuoka University

August 10, 2012 --CSS Director Michael Stiber signed an exchange agreement between CSS and the Graduate School of Informatics at Shizuoka University, Japan during a visit from Prof. Takashi Watanabe of their Department of Computer Science. This agreement, negotiated by CSS Prof. Munehiro Fukuda, provides for exchanges of researchers, faculty, and graduate students as well as research collaborations.

Bachelor of Science Degree Name Change Approved

July 6, 2012-- UW President Michael Young today approved our BS degree's new name: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Software Engineering. Like the change to our MS degree, we feel this improves the clarity of communication with folks outside UW.